


Sunflowers

by touloser



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, carry on mini bang, sorry for the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touloser/pseuds/touloser
Summary: He had always known this was how he would end.The villain always dies at the hands of the golden hero.But he didn’t know it would be quite like this.(AKA: a Snowbaz Hanahaki AU)





	Sunflowers

**Author's Note:**

> ITS FINISHED!
> 
> This fic is written for the Carry On Mini Bang! The art that accompanies this piece is by the beautiful amazing wonderful eternally patient sweet kind gorgeous @minieow on tumblr. Please please PLEASE go follow her and check out her art, I am seriously undeserving of her. This fic was beta-d by @unlucky-pennyy and @gobling-creacher on tumblr. I love you guys. Thank you for putting up with me and getting rid of my unnecessary commas <3. 
> 
> ON TO THE FIC!

**Hanahaki Disease** ( ** _花吐き病_ ** ): a disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from unrequited love.  It ends when the object of love returns their feelings, or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear. Affects less than 1,000 people worldwide.

~~~~

Baz doesn’t know when it started.

Maybe it was during their first year, the very first time they met, when Snow flashed him an uncertain smile and Baz thought it might be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

Maybe it was at the end of their third year, after a scathing argument. When Simon slammed the door and left, tears rimming his eyes. When Baz, despite his dignity and despite his best instincts, chased after Snow and apologized, knowing that Snow’s friendship would probably destroy him. 

Maybe it was the night in their fifth year when Simon got pissed, and Penny and Agatha were absolutely nowhere to be found. When Baz had to drag a drunk Simon all the way across campus towards Mummers House. When Simon giggled “Your hair is so shiny,” and pulled at the strands.

Or maybe it was all of it. All of those little moments that led to Baz’s realization that he might be in love with Simon Snow. 

And that Simon Snow did not love him back.

~~~~

Baz navigates roughly through the pages of his Magical History textbook. This is his sixth consecutive hour at this desk, sitting on the uncomfortable chair. His supplies litter the table, similar to his current mental state. 

On the other side of the room, Simon, albeit less quietly, seems to express the same frustrations.

“Crowley, you’d think after five years this might get a little easier,” he whines. 

Baz shushes him. “Snow, shut up or neither of us will ever get this done.”

The power shuts off.

Simon cheers. 

Baz rolls his eyes, even though Simon can’t see him. He mutters  **“Let there be light”** and rolls his eyes again, just for the effect.

Simon’s face is suddenly illuminated by the light emanating from his wand. Baz loses all focus and simply stares at his cheerful expression. 

“Baz? Are you listening?” 

Baz startles. “I was distracted by your ugly face. Please continue.”

Simon frowns, but repeats his statement. “Do you think Professor Bascus will give us an extension on the exam?”

Baz scoffs. “Professor Bascus doesn't take bullshit. I doubt he’d move the exam date.”

Simon slumps down in his chair and groans. “I can’t do this anymore,” he whines. “I’ll probably fail the damn exam anyways, since Penny can’t help me.”

Baz bites his lip and tries to think of a way to offer help without sounding like an idiot madly in love. After a second he abandons this endeavour and says, “I’ll help you study.”

Simon’s face lights up, brighter than Baz’s wand. “Really? You’d do that?”

Baz tries to save face and retorts, “You definitely need the study time more than I do.”

But Simon is not discouraged by Baz’s rudeness. He cheers loudly and throws his books and himself onto the floor between their desks. Baz gracefully lowers himself to sit beside him.

“What parts do you struggle with most?”

Simon shrugs. “All of it.”

Baz takes a deep breath and launches into an explanation of magic’s role in World War I. 

~~~~

“So then Rogerson, for some reason, announces publicly that he cheated on his wife.”

Simon’s jaw drops open slightly. “Wait, he what?”

Baz nods sadly. “Rich white men.”

Simon makes a series of indecipherable screeches that shouldn’t be adorable but totally are. 

Okay, maybe they were a little off topic. And yeah, maybe Baz has been slightly exaggerating the material. But the main points were still preserved! In his defense, it was worth it to see the reactions escaping from Simon at every scandal. Baz’s guard is going down by the second and he can do nothing about it.

“How dumb is this guy?” Simon’s exasperation leaks out of every word.

“Dumber than-” Baz begins, but is interrupted by a raucous laugh outside, quickly followed by a thump.

Baz raises an eyebrow at Simon, attempting to hide his grin. Simon shrugs gleefully. They rush to the window.

In the common area between the Mummers House and the White Chapel, three students (fifth year, by the look of them) are giggling and stumbling. Baz and Simon can’t hear what’s being said, but it's clear that they are high out of their minds.

“Blimey,” Simon’s eyes are wide and amused. 

Baz stares out the window, eyes unfocused, devising a plan. He pulls his wand out of his sleeve, and mutters  **“Stand your ground”** . 

Simon’s mouth drops open just a little, and he lets out a surprised laugh. 

Below them, two girls attempt to square up for a fight. Upon realizing that their feet were stuck to the floor, they started shrieking loudly. The last student begins to run around in a circle howling.

Simon loses his shit laughing. Baz bites his lip to stop the laughter from escaping him as well.

“Oh, oh my god,” Simon breathes out between laughs. “That was-” Baz never heard the end of that sentence.

It was odd for the two of them to be so buddy buddy with each other. Baz never really realized how much of the coldness between them was his doing. He let down his walls and Simon had stepped right in. Their usual animosity was gone, replaced by a simple friendship. 

Baz coughs suddenly.

This might be a problem.

~~~~

The coughing doesn’t stop. His teachers glare at him when he breaks out in a fit of coughs, but they thankfully don’t kick him out for his frequent disruptions of class.

Still, he attends every class. He does his homework, ignores Nyall’s curious stares, ignores his Coach’s angry reprimands, ignores Simon's quiet concern.

Baz knows what the coughing means. He wishes he were ignorant to it, though. Maybe if he ignores the problem, it’ll go away,

~~~~

The problem does not go away.

The problem gets worse.

The coughing is no longer simply irritating. He can feel his lungs shaking with every inhale. He feels fragile, hollow. Lethargy seeps through his bones.

He still hasn’t given up on going to class, though. You could rip his 100% from his cold, dying hands. 

Baz does not go to football practices. Granted, it was not by choice. Coach said he couldn’t get everyone else on the team sick too.

Which meant Baz had a lot of free time. He uses it for studying much more than necessary and just general overthinking of his problems.

He gives in to the urge of trying to fix something that's unfixable.

He puts on his coat and boots, and quickly strides across campus.

The library is thankfully empty, but the head librarian shoots him a glare. He checks the time. Nearly curfew, and the library is closing soon.

That’s fine. Baz knows what he’s looking for.

The health section is near the book of the research library, on the second floor. After glancing around him, Baz pulls out his wand and murmurs,  **“Fine-tooth comb: Hanahaki”. **

The books each glitz and shimmer for a moment each as the spell works its way through them. Baz impatiently awaits for the majority of the glitter to die down. Three books still shine well after the rest. Baz grabs them, checks them out as quickly as possible, throwing away his receipt. 

As soon as he descended the front steps of the library, he could feel the coughs rising. He rushes towards the Mummers House, the brisk chill of the night air biting at his arms even through his coat.

The urge to cough shakes his whole body. Oddly, he feels something lodged in the base of his throat. It restricts his breathing slightly, not enough to be painful, but enough to be noticeable and irritating. He tries to clear his throat, but it remains, scratching and scratching.

He holds in his coughs as he climbs the stairs to their room. When he reaches the oak door, he scrambles to find the key in his pocket. As he unlocks the room, he hopes that Simon is still studying with Penny.

The door swings open. Thankfully, Simon isn’t in the room. 

Baz lets himself cough. 

And he has never felt like such shit before in his life. 

The coughing hacks his body. Every inch of his body shakes and aches. He falls to the floor, his three books falling beside him.

And still no matter how much he coughs, whatever it is lobbed in his throat does not relent. In fact, it seems to get worse, and breathing gets more and more difficult. 

Finally, with one last horrific cough, he feels the object dislodge. It drops into his hand.

Suddenly, the itching in his throat clears. The urge to cough goes away. 

And in his hand, a sunflower petal lays. 

~~~~

Baz is absolutely fucking horrified. 

His research only solidified what he already knew: Baz was going to die. 

Well not exactly. His research told him that he had two options. 

1). Die.

2). Have the surgery, and forget Simon.

So.

Baz was going to die. 

~~~~

(Technically, if Simon fell in love with Baz, he would live. But there was no point in torturing himself by believing that.)

~~~~

The petals come more and more often lately. 

He hit a new record of coughing up petals on four different occasions in the span of one class. Truly impressive. 

Breathing has become an increasingly difficult task. According to his frantic research, his disease is still in its early phases. The symptoms were still mild; Baz was coughing up only one petal at a time. Soon, the petals would start to come in groups of three or four. Then, during the late stages of disease, the victim would begin to cough whole flowers. Super. 

So, when, a few weeks later, he coughs up three petals in one go, he isn’t very surprised. He considers the petals he had coughed into his fist discretely and thinks, “this is a development”. Then he returns to his afternoon tea with Dev and Nyall. 

~~~~

Baz does his best to ignore Simon. Maybe he can forget how idiotically in love he is with Simon’s face if he doesn’t see it for a while. Needless to say, it does not work. 

Baz lays in his bed, tired yet unable to sleep due to the thoughts scrambling through his head.

He is awake when Simon suddenly gasps and sits up in his bed, breathing shakily. 

Baz should act like he’s asleep. He’s already a worthless idiot, pining like a schoolboy. 

But Baz is weak. 

He mutters, “Simon?”

Simon startles a bit, but relaxes after he sees Baz. His eyes shuffle close and he takes a deep breath. 

Fuck, this is a mistake. The moonlight shines across Simon’s unfair cheekbones and highlights his perfect nose. 

Baz repeats, “Simon?” and upon receiving no response, adds, “Are you okay?”

Simon lets out a hoarse laugh and says nothing. Silence hangs in the air between them, heavy and so much louder than silence has any right to be. 

Baz worries his lip between his teeth and thinks. He thinks about what he could do right in this moment that he should definitely fucking not do. 

And then he thinks about how he never really does what he’s supposed to around Simon.

“Come here,” Baz says. 

Simon glances at him for a moment, but complies. He tosses his sheets aside and crosses the room. Baz doesn’t process what he has just said until Simon stands before him. Well, too late to back out now. 

Baz scoots over in his bed, willing Simon to lay down beside him. 

They fit together like clockwork. Arms slither into the right places and hands card through hair and everything just feels so  _ right.  _ Like someone had taken the effort to make them match perfectly. 

Baz fell asleep nearly instantly. 

~~~~

Baz awoke the next morning to his blaring alarm, warning him to get ready for the upcoming day of classes. 

He doesn’t even have the time to process what had happened last night before he is overcome with horrid coughing.

Every cough rattles his skeleton. He climbs over a stirring Simon and rushes to the bathroom. 

God, he can’t fucking breathe. The petals lodged in his throat had never felt so big before. 

He manages to lock the bathroom door before falling to the floor. 

He coughs out a petal, but the coughing doesn’t stop there as usual. He hacks on and on and on, feeling brittle and disgusting. 

Simon asks something outside that sounds vaguely concerned. Baz ignores him. 

For a moment, the coughing dies down. Baz lays on the tile floor, surrounded by a plethora of yellow flowers. 

The coughing comes back, and he sits up once more. He didn’t know it could get any worse than it already was. 

Simon sounds more than concerned right now. His voice is panicked and getting a little loud. Still, Baz isn’t quite comprehending what is being said. 

He could feel his body deteriorate, all the way to the tips of his toes. He was so deprived of air he felt light headed and a little nauseous. 

Baz heaves and heaves.

And finally. Baz throws up a full sunflower. He regards the bright and optimistic color for a moment, smiling at this reminder of Simon. 

He lets his head fall to the ground. He has never felt so exhausted before in his life. 

The door bursts open. Simon rushes inside and immediately falls to Baz’s side. He is saying something, but Baz is too sleepy and light headed to hear. 

The tears streaming down his cheeks didn’t match the sunflower interior. He was sorry to see it. 

~~~~

He had always known this was how he would end.

The villain always dies at the hands of the golden hero.

But he didn’t know it would be quite like this.


End file.
